Selling on Amazon: Restricted Products

This isn’t a tidy how-to. It’s a field log for people pushing products through Amazon’s most sensitive gates. The reality is that most items are “restricted” in some way, whether it is wording, imagery, claims, or compliance documentation. If you have ever tried to list anything even slightly adjacent to health, safety, electronics, or regulated use, you know the feeling: a marketplace that can change your life, and rearrange your sanity, overnight. The traffic is unmatched. The conversion rate is miraculous. And the systems that govern it? A cocktail of automated flags, offshore reviews, and opaque policies that can put your best product in the bin before you’ve brewed your morning coffee.

The Takedown Lottery

Let’s start with the headline frustration: products taken down for policy violations that aren’t even true. It often starts with an email that reads like a final warning from a robot. Because it is. Amazon’s moderation stack leans heavily on AI classifiers to detect prohibited claims, restricted terms, or potential IP overlaps. False positives are common, context is rare, and your listing disappears first, questions maybe later. We have had routine items incorrectly categorised as coronavirus test kits, and simple home devices classified as professional, prescription-only equipment. None of it was accurate, all of it burned time and rank.

The practical response is to avoid trigger words. Terms like “medical”, “antiviral”, “coronavirus”, “prescription”, and certain certification acronyms can pull your offer into restricted flows even when the product is harmless. Write for safety reviewers first: neutral nouns, functional verbs, and plain benefits.

Image-first, wording-light

We are shifting to product images that do the heavy lifting and copy that stays minimal and unprovocative. Clear studio shots, on-pack details, quick callouts, and simple diagrams can show exactly what the product is and how it is used without tripping sensitive terms. Bullets stay short and generic, the title stays clean, and backend keywords carry the long-tail. In practice, this lets more offers get live and stay live. Even sensitive categories sometimes pass if the visuals carry the message and the wording remains neutral and factual.

Obscure categories, precise ads

Another lever is category choice. If the obvious category is a minefield of compliance triggers, list in the most accurate but least policed alternative you can justify. Stay within the spirit of the catalogue, but avoid problematic shelves when they are indistinguishable to shoppers. Why? Because ads do the targeting. Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands let you reach exact search terms even if your browse node is not the busiest one. Categories get moderated. Ad keywords often do not, or at least not with the same hair trigger. If you can line up visuals, title, and basic bullets so the product is clear, you can let ads find the customer and skip the worst of the organic moderation.

• Pick the quiet aisleChoose a valid but less crowded category to minimise random compliance flags and competitive pile ups.
• Let ads do the heavy liftingBuild exact match and phrase match campaigns to capture the real intent terms your copy avoids.
• Keep the page cleanUse images and neutral language to explain. Keep risky words in negative keyword lists rather than on the page.

Practical countermeasures

• Ship compliant by defaultWrite like a regulator is reading. Avoid medical, performance, and comparative claims unless you have bulletproof substantiation. Keep image text clean. Store evidence in a single folder so appeals are fast.
• Pre-build your appeal packDraft a calm, factual Plan of Action template covering root cause, corrective actions, and preventative measures. Swap in specifics when the hammer falls. Speed matters.
• Delete and relist when stuckIf a new listing isn’t approved automatically within minutes (no manual review), end it. Rewrite titles, shift keywords, tweak browse nodes, and relist. You are playing an algorithmic pinball machine. Nudge it.

The Listing Hijack Problem

On Amazon, you don’t own your product page; you borrow it. Other sellers can attach to your listing and undercut you, winning the Buy Box with thinner margins or questionable stock. In some categories, this is a sport. In others, it’s a business model.

The master frustration is that the incentives allow it. Amazon values customer price first, seller identity second. For generic or wholesale items, the marketplace design encourages competition on the same ASIN. That’s great for buyers; brutal for brands without control.

Locking the doors

• OEM or private label everything you canControl the brand, packaging, and barcodes. Enrol in Brand Registry. Use unique GTINs. If you can’t own it, it’s a price war.
• Source brand-directSecure authorised reseller or exclusive distribution agreements. Keep documentation on hand for ungating and infringement disputes.
• Harden the listingAdd distinctive product shots, on-pack marks, and variant structures that are expensive to mimic. Watermark packaging renders. Use A+ Content to establish brand identity.

When the Platform Competes With You

There’s an elephant in the fulfilment centre: Amazon Retail. Multiple investigations and policy debates have asked whether a platform that operates the marketplace should also sell on it with privileged data or fee advantages. European antitrust cases have probed self-preferencing and use of third-party seller data; commitments have been made in the EU to limit certain practices. Yet in the UK, many sellers still report what feels like unfair competition dynamics.

The allegation goes like this: Amazon can price below your floor because it effectively bypasses its own referral fees when competing as a first-party retailer, and it can leverage insight into category velocity to pick winners. Whether or not that’s true in every case, the lived experience for many brands is simple: you wake up, Amazon Retail is on your ASIN, and your margin math no longer works.

What you can actually do

• Drop the productYou can't do anything about it, so drop the product, cut your losses, and move on. Next, secure the walls with OEM, brand registry, and tighter distribution.

Operations: Play the Game That Exists

Amazon doesn’t play fair; it plays scale. You won’t change the rules, so optimise for resilience:

• Inventory is strategyUse conservative FBA send-ins early. Don’t flood stock until the listing is proven. Keep a FBM fallback ready for when FBA hiccups.
• Account Health as a KPITreat every takedown as a signal, not a verdict. Review Account Health weekly, triage flags within 24 hours, and track patterns by keyword, image, and category. If an ASIN is auto-flagged, rebuild it with safer wording and image-led explanation, then refile under a less sensitive but still accurate category. Keep a change log so you know what version passed auto-approval.
• Keep your own dataMaintain an independent audit trail. Photograph every inbound and each batch. Save COAs, invoices, POs, and supplier contracts in one place. Reconcile FBA/FBM weekly: export Inventory Adjustments, Reconciliation, and Received reports and match them to your ASN, carton IDs, and FNSKU counts. Capture shipment IDs, carrier proofs, time-stamped photos, and pack weights to support claims. Keep documents for at least 24 months. Do not rely solely on Seller Central; use your own ledger to spot discrepancies and recover reimbursements quickly.

Law, Policy, and Reality

European regulators have pushed for guardrails around self-preferencing and data use in marketplaces, and Amazon has made commitments within the EU. But enforcement is patchy, interpretations vary, and outside those jurisdictions, like the UK, sellers still report toxic patterns: sudden price matching from first-party, algorithmic demotions after raising price, or suspicious timing on policy flags post success. Correlation isn’t proof, but pattern recognition matters when your cashflow depends on it.

You don’t need a law degree to survive here, you need a plan. Assume friction. Build cushions. Own your brand. Diversify channels. Document everything. And remember: the marketplace owes you traffic, not a living.

Final Word: Play to Win, Not to Complain

Selling on Amazon is both a gift and a grind. You can build a real business here, but only if you accept the rules as they are: automated, imperfect, and irritating. Treat it like a system to be navigated, not a judge to be persuaded. Own your brand, control your supply, avoid risky keywords, move fast on dead listings, and keep your appeal pack ready. That’s not cynicism; that’s professionalism in a marketplace that rewards speed and punishes sentimentality. Build with resilience, and Amazon becomes a channel, not your entire fate.